ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited June 2015
Okay, this thread has been cleansed of quite a few comments. Please remember not to ever discuss the details of exploits. When you discuss exploit details you spread the use and abuse of them. This makes you the problem just as much as the exploiters. It has nothing to do with Cryptic not caring. In fact it has everything to do with them caring enough to keep the spread of exploitation to a minimum until solutions can be created.
This policy will not be changing no matter what.
If you have an exploit to report then please feel free to contact the Community Team, send an in game report or contact support via a ticket or sending an e-mail to customerservice@perfectworld.com . The community team sends off exploits right to the devs as soon as we get informed of them.
As for the reason why the forums have a much faster response time than in game issues: there are three players who volunteer their free time to maintain the forums. There is not somebody sitting at a desk in Cryptic's office moderating the forums. We tend to have a slightly better response time because we are less busy while we are on the forums. Additionally it is much easier to move posts and type up warnings than solve bugs in code.
With that said...
Matthias, please re-word your opening post and stop insinuating that players who have more than you exploited. That is simply not correct, is quite rude and stereotypical. You have done a halfway decent job of not having this devolve into flame or exploit discussions so I am willing to give you a chance to sail this ship on the right course but understand that you may not continue to make such accusations and if these accusations become prevalent by yourself or others this thread will be closed.
And the same goes for others. Being angry that there are exploits is fine and always has been but there may be absolutely no discussions of the details or accusations of abuse. None. No hints. Nothing.
Keep the complaints about the slow response time civil and completely devoid of accusations, insults and exploits discussions and this thread may remain open but as I said before we volunteered our free time so if we have to end up baby-sitting this thread it will be closed.
Personally I hate botters more! They are the ruiners of the game.
They are the cause that we see BIS 4k pugs in lfg parties w/o having any dps, skill or knowledge of the game.
it cost around 150M Ad to get bis, maybe more now, that was things stopped at legendary. Even if you had 50 toons on leadership you can refine at most 1.2M a day but really, who has 50 alts unless its for botting, you would have to live in the gateway. At this point though, to have all mythic, trans enchants etc, there is only 2 options, spend an *** load of money or cheat, unless you think these people did not have Bis in mod 5 because they were waiting for mod 6
ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited June 2015
Very wise words metalljdt.
I am not always happy with the response time of the developers, no offense guys, but these conspiracy theories are so outlandish and outright toxic. It doesn't take an inteligent person to understand why discussing exploits is a problem. It only takes somebody to think a couple of steps ahead.
The best way to prevent exploits is to not have people know about them. If people don't know they exist they can't use them. By discussing them you spread the knowledge of their existence and thus the abuse. Despite whatever tin foil hat beliefs some of you have the best thing you can possibly do is report it directly to the developers.
Or if you want to continue to wear a tin foil hat then send it to a community moderator which are are players with a vested interest in the betterment of the game from a player standpoint who have the ability to ensure those reports are discreetly handed to the developers to resolve exploits without spreading the use of them.
Morgan Freeman wasn't advocating to stop talking about racism because that would fix it. He was trying to get the point across that the only way to get rid of racism is to stop seeing each other as different because of our color. It's a gross over simplification but his point wasn't hard to grasp. In no point in history has a problem been fixed because everyone just pretended that it wasn't happening. In fact that's how most of the atrocities in history happened.
I have played NW since Mod 2, and knew nothing about Guilds, team play, basically knew nothing. I had never used an exploit due to not knowing they even existed, but there was no need to exploit anything as the game was fun and manageable as a solo player. The fun (for me) is the journey, the journey to achieve higher levels, better gear, become more powerful etc. I have heard of players exploiting certain maps in mod 4 and 5, but paid no attention as it was not something I needed or wanted to do. BUT........ Mod 6 changed all that. Exploits are now all I hear about... and why? Maybe because this game would be unplayable to a LOT of players without them? eCC/ToS has an end boss that only a VERY few have defeated legit from what I have heard due to the insane mount of HP they have, their toughness, and the adds that one shot even the most epic players. If they would fix that so it can be done legit, there would be no need to exploit anything. I love a challenge, but to make it impossible for most to complete without exploits, will take away ALL reasons to even play. Why play a game you have NO chance to win??
When people think about exploits these days cheeseballing the boss isn't something that's high on the list. Its fairly minor compared to a lot of other things you could have been up to. And if you started in mod 2 don't tell me you didn't look up at valindra from somewhere below.
When people think about exploits these days cheeseballing the boss isn't something that's high on the list. Its fairly minor compared to a lot of other things you could have been up to. And if you started in mod 2 don't tell me you didn't look up at valindra from somewhere below.
If you are referring to me, I did not even enter Valindra's until Mod 4, due to deleting toons left and right because I got bored with it and wanted a different toon, not to mention my builds were horrible. I got into a guild in Mod 4 and had Guild mates that were EPIC run with me through the Dungeons so... no, I never used nor knew about ANY exploit in any dungeon, and that IS the God's honest truth.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
Sure, you can't use what you don't know. When you put it that bluntly it makes sense. But let's be honest here. You don't learn a new exploit here on the forums and we all know that. You learn them from a friend/guildie/temporary team-mate or whatever. If any sign of serious exploits show up on the forums, people have been abusing it for a while.
...
Surely there must be a more efficient way of us helping besides just report everything unusual blindly and without guidance. Because that's what it comes down to. We want to help catching those exploits and their abusers, not perform them ourselves. Yes, I understand the reason for trying to keep exploits quiet. But at the same time, it also doesn't give us much to report.
The reason why the forums are so strict is because this is all written down and can be viewed for years to come. I highly doubt people will ever get banned in game for saying somebody is stupid but on the forums that will not fly. No you probably won't even get notified if you did the first several times but if we notice somebody has a habit of calling other people stupid they will be reprimanded.
Think of it as the difference between talking with people at work and hanging up a letter on a bulletin board. There are of course boundaries in conversation but they tend to be far looser. The occasional curse might be overlooked or even outright normal but in most places of business having profanity or insults in writing is a huge no-no.
You might talk about how dumb your coworker Timmy is to everybody including your boss but I bet you can not put it in writing and hang it up. The forums are simply a different set of expectations. It does not matter one bit how prevalent an exploit is just don't post it.
As for exploits, there is no guideline. It's really self explanatory and common sense.
Let me put it to you this way: the mods don't get told what is or is not an exploit. There's no list of criteria the developers give to us. We simply use common sense and logic and make our own judgement call.
If you notice a power is doing a bit more damage than it should then it's just a bug. If you are able to use a combination of powers to guarantee hundreds of thousands of damage that's likely an exploit or something of high enough priority to resolve sooner rather than later as one hits should not be common as a general rule of thumb.
In short, if it is too good to be true it probably is. It's not complicated to figure out. I got exactly zero seconds in training to detect the difference and as far as I know I have only been wrong once regarding artifact refinement.
ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited June 2015
If we are removing it then it is because we feel it crosses the line into an exploit.
While we can't say Cryptic will deem it as a punishable exploit we can and do make that judgement call and remove the discussions from the forums until staff say otherwise. And like I said the only time we have been wrong in our judgement was with refining and artifact into another artifact. Cryptic gets the final say but if we remove it it is probably an exploit.
Doesn't mean there will be punishments, but it is enough of a problem to not be deemed appropriate for the forums so likely best avoided. If you are truly that curious you may ask any of us about it via PM, but as I said it's all very common sense.
(...) as one hits should not be common as a general rule of thumb. (...)
Cool, now be so kind and tell that to devs that made NPCs oneshotting people left and right And I don't see it being 'high enough priority to resolve sooner rather than later'.
If you ask me, I see both exploits AND imbalance equally harmful for the game yet only the former get's 'ASAP' treatment... But that's just a picture of how devs care about the comunity I suppose.
I am not always happy with the response time of the developers, no offense guys, but these conspiracy theories are so outlandish and outright toxic. It doesn't take an inteligent person to understand why discussing exploits is a problem. It only takes somebody to think a couple of steps ahead.
The best way to prevent exploits is to not have people know about them. If people don't know they exist they can't use them. By discussing them you spread the knowledge of their existence and thus the abuse. Despite whatever tin foil hat beliefs some of you have the best thing you can possibly do is report it directly to the developers.
Or if you want to continue to wear a tin foil hat then send it to a community moderator which are are players with a vested interest in the betterment of the game from a player standpoint who have the ability to ensure those reports are discreetly handed to the developers to resolve exploits without spreading the use of them.
How comes an exploit becomes more and more popular when you report it to the "support" ? Who are those GM's working for support? Every single ticket there's another GM answering. Are they really keeping such knowledge confidential?
Cool, now be so kind and tell that to devs that made NPCs oneshotting people left and right And I don't see it being 'high enough priority to resolve sooner rather than later'.
If you ask me, I see both exploits AND imbalance equally harmful for the game yet only the former get's 'ASAP' treatment... But that's just a picture of how devs care about the comunity I suppose.
Not sure if you are trying to be sarcastic but NPC's are not what I meant. You should not be able to one shot another player but NPC's are a lot less inteligent and a lot more predicable. They kind of need an edge to have any chance of causing threat to players. Either way this threead is not the place to discuss that opinion.
How comes an exploit becomes more and more popular when you report it to the "support" ? Who are those GM's working for support? Every single ticket there's another GM answering. Are they really keeping such knowledge confidential?
DO NOT POST EXPLOITS!
Yes they are unless they would like to lose their jobs. Support are staffed and paid by PWE specifically to help users with various issues and to relay bug reports and exploit details to the developers. I don't know exactly how support handles bug reports, particularly exploits, but the community team catalogs them and reports them to the developers directly.
Again let's keep the tin foil hats away. I am trying to be nice here but I lost much of my desire to hear those conspiracy theories (accusations) long ago.
They deal with them very poorly as anyone with half a clue is well aware but if the innocents don't hear the tree falling in the forest did it really make a sound.
dragoness10Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 780Arc User
edited June 2015
I had an argument a few weeks ago with somebody complaining that it's "not their job to report bugs until Cryptic pays them". They proceeded on with their need to "shame with a livestream to make them take action". This seemed counterproductive to getting RID of exploiters by making a recording of how things are exploited, but refusing to report it. It just provided more information to exploiters.
(Before anyone ask/says anything here I am not going to name any names, nor mention which exploits were being taken advantage of. That's information I do report.)
There are things players can do themselves to help get rid of these exploiters.
1) Submit a ticket in game.
2) Contact a Dev privately by forums Private Message, or in game mail.
3) Use that IGNORE button on exploiters so less people party with them.
4) Consider it a kickable from your Guild offense to regularly use cheats and exploits, or to chastise/vote kick those whom don't cheat.
5) Encourage PUGs to join your Guild (or Friends list), and teach them legit ways to defeat dungeons/ skirmishes.
6) Leave a Dungeon/ Skirmish yourself when the rest of the party insists on using exploits.
"All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved." - Sun Tzu
" I tried to figure out the enigma that was you, and then I realized mastering Wild Magic was easier." - Old Wizard in Waterdeep
"Why is it dragons only use ketchup? I'd like a little wasabi please. Us silvers like a variety of condiments."
"Don't call them foolish mortals. One, they don't learn from it. Two, It just ticks them off." - An Ancient Red Dragon
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instynctiveMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,885Arc User
4) Consider it a kickable from your Guild offense to regularly use cheats and exploits, or to chastise/vote kick those whom don't cheat.
I have a very strict no-exploit policy in my guild. I detest cheaters, and have made that very, very clear. I don't even want to think about the number of people I've had to kick, or they've QQ when I approach them about their exploiting.
I agree with your sentiment, don't get me wrong. But clearly it's not enough. If so many exploits get past the preview server, how are we to tell what's WaI and what's not?
Well, some things get reported over and over on preview. Nightmare Thursday for instance was reported in public bug reporting forums multiple times at least six weeks before it happened on live. Something gamebreaking still working on live despite numerous public reports over a significant period of time, it could be reasonably concluded to be WAI. More transparency in bug reporting would help, pretending a problem (Nightmare Thursday for instance) doesn't exist only hurts by extending the pain, imagine if it had been kept quiet, it would have gone on for far longer and with far greater imbalance of reward for the exploiters versus the community (astral resonators exploit for instance).
I wasted five million AD promoting the Foundry.
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bubetteMember, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 17Arc User
edited June 2015
As a grown man who plays Neverwinter and who has worked his entire adult life, how I spend my money and what I spend my money on is my own business, and if I wish to spend it on zen then ad to outfit my toon, then that's my own business as well. Those who choose to call me a whale or an exploiter show themselves to be nothing more then children whining because they don't have the same thing and they wish to deny me that which they themselves cannot afford. My first suggestion to you whiners is simple. Work hard save your money and you then can do whatever it is you wish to spend your money on. Other then that, if you don't like what I've written here...my second suggestion is grow up.
I had full rank 10s back when CN still paid off, and had a number of alts in pretty good gear. Now with new mods, regearing, and more enchant slots, I have some rank 9s in my defensive slots, offense slots at rank 10, and artifacts at legendary status, and all alts have been retired. This was from 2+ years of heavy game play + money I put in the game previously (really game is not worth putting in a penny any more) and a 5 tab personal guild bank that was full prior to mod 6.
You can easily get full epic artifact/artifact equipment & rank 7 - 8 enchants just by playing the game.
In mod 5 and prior, you had to spend lots of time farming foundries. Now you have to run in circles in IWD for hours upon hours.
Honestly, I don't think hardly anyone in game has full rank 12s without putting in some serious money or if they still had hundreds of millions of AD saved from earlier mod CN farms, or from prior exploits....that being said it is possible if someone is willing to commit hundreds of hours to just farming. There is definitely money to be made on the AH, but I find it hard to believe anyone could get the hundreds of millions of AD it would take to get full upgrades.
Comments
This policy will not be changing no matter what.
If you have an exploit to report then please feel free to contact the Community Team, send an in game report or contact support via a ticket or sending an e-mail to customerservice@perfectworld.com . The community team sends off exploits right to the devs as soon as we get informed of them.
As for the reason why the forums have a much faster response time than in game issues: there are three players who volunteer their free time to maintain the forums. There is not somebody sitting at a desk in Cryptic's office moderating the forums. We tend to have a slightly better response time because we are less busy while we are on the forums. Additionally it is much easier to move posts and type up warnings than solve bugs in code.
With that said...
Matthias, please re-word your opening post and stop insinuating that players who have more than you exploited. That is simply not correct, is quite rude and stereotypical. You have done a halfway decent job of not having this devolve into flame or exploit discussions so I am willing to give you a chance to sail this ship on the right course but understand that you may not continue to make such accusations and if these accusations become prevalent by yourself or others this thread will be closed.
And the same goes for others. Being angry that there are exploits is fine and always has been but there may be absolutely no discussions of the details or accusations of abuse. None. No hints. Nothing.
Keep the complaints about the slow response time civil and completely devoid of accusations, insults and exploits discussions and this thread may remain open but as I said before we volunteered our free time so if we have to end up baby-sitting this thread it will be closed.
They are the ruiners of the game.
They are the cause that we see BIS 4k pugs in lfg parties w/o having any dps, skill or knowledge of the game.
botters >>> exploiters
I am not always happy with the response time of the developers, no offense guys, but these conspiracy theories are so outlandish and outright toxic. It doesn't take an inteligent person to understand why discussing exploits is a problem. It only takes somebody to think a couple of steps ahead.
The best way to prevent exploits is to not have people know about them. If people don't know they exist they can't use them. By discussing them you spread the knowledge of their existence and thus the abuse. Despite whatever tin foil hat beliefs some of you have the best thing you can possibly do is report it directly to the developers.
Or if you want to continue to wear a tin foil hat then send it to a community moderator which are are players with a vested interest in the betterment of the game from a player standpoint who have the ability to ensure those reports are discreetly handed to the developers to resolve exploits without spreading the use of them.
If you are referring to me, I did not even enter Valindra's until Mod 4, due to deleting toons left and right because I got bored with it and wanted a different toon, not to mention my builds were horrible. I got into a guild in Mod 4 and had Guild mates that were EPIC run with me through the Dungeons so... no, I never used nor knew about ANY exploit in any dungeon, and that IS the God's honest truth.
The reason why the forums are so strict is because this is all written down and can be viewed for years to come. I highly doubt people will ever get banned in game for saying somebody is stupid but on the forums that will not fly. No you probably won't even get notified if you did the first several times but if we notice somebody has a habit of calling other people stupid they will be reprimanded.
Think of it as the difference between talking with people at work and hanging up a letter on a bulletin board. There are of course boundaries in conversation but they tend to be far looser. The occasional curse might be overlooked or even outright normal but in most places of business having profanity or insults in writing is a huge no-no.
You might talk about how dumb your coworker Timmy is to everybody including your boss but I bet you can not put it in writing and hang it up. The forums are simply a different set of expectations. It does not matter one bit how prevalent an exploit is just don't post it.
As for exploits, there is no guideline. It's really self explanatory and common sense.
Let me put it to you this way: the mods don't get told what is or is not an exploit. There's no list of criteria the developers give to us. We simply use common sense and logic and make our own judgement call.
If you notice a power is doing a bit more damage than it should then it's just a bug. If you are able to use a combination of powers to guarantee hundreds of thousands of damage that's likely an exploit or something of high enough priority to resolve sooner rather than later as one hits should not be common as a general rule of thumb.
In short, if it is too good to be true it probably is. It's not complicated to figure out. I got exactly zero seconds in training to detect the difference and as far as I know I have only been wrong once regarding artifact refinement.
While we can't say Cryptic will deem it as a punishable exploit we can and do make that judgement call and remove the discussions from the forums until staff say otherwise. And like I said the only time we have been wrong in our judgement was with refining and artifact into another artifact. Cryptic gets the final say but if we remove it it is probably an exploit.
Doesn't mean there will be punishments, but it is enough of a problem to not be deemed appropriate for the forums so likely best avoided. If you are truly that curious you may ask any of us about it via PM, but as I said it's all very common sense.
Cool, now be so kind and tell that to devs that made NPCs oneshotting people left and right
If you ask me, I see both exploits AND imbalance equally harmful for the game yet only the former get's 'ASAP' treatment... But that's just a picture of how devs care about the comunity I suppose.
How comes an exploit becomes more and more popular when you report it to the "support" ? Who are those GM's working for support? Every single ticket there's another GM answering. Are they really keeping such knowledge confidential?
DO NOT POST EXPLOITS!
Not sure if you are trying to be sarcastic but NPC's are not what I meant. You should not be able to one shot another player but NPC's are a lot less inteligent and a lot more predicable. They kind of need an edge to have any chance of causing threat to players. Either way this threead is not the place to discuss that opinion.
Yes they are unless they would like to lose their jobs. Support are staffed and paid by PWE specifically to help users with various issues and to relay bug reports and exploit details to the developers. I don't know exactly how support handles bug reports, particularly exploits, but the community team catalogs them and reports them to the developers directly.
Again let's keep the tin foil hats away. I am trying to be nice here but I lost much of my desire to hear those conspiracy theories (accusations) long ago.
(Before anyone ask/says anything here I am not going to name any names, nor mention which exploits were being taken advantage of. That's information I do report.)
There are things players can do themselves to help get rid of these exploiters.
1) Submit a ticket in game.
2) Contact a Dev privately by forums Private Message, or in game mail.
3) Use that IGNORE button on exploiters so less people party with them.
4) Consider it a kickable from your Guild offense to regularly use cheats and exploits, or to chastise/vote kick those whom don't cheat.
5) Encourage PUGs to join your Guild (or Friends list), and teach them legit ways to defeat dungeons/ skirmishes.
6) Leave a Dungeon/ Skirmish yourself when the rest of the party insists on using exploits.
"All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved." - Sun Tzu
"Why is it dragons only use ketchup? I'd like a little wasabi please. Us silvers like a variety of condiments."
"Don't call them foolish mortals. One, they don't learn from it. Two, It just ticks them off." - An Ancient Red Dragon
<snip>
I have a very strict no-exploit policy in my guild. I detest cheaters, and have made that very, very clear. I don't even want to think about the number of people I've had to kick, or they've QQ when I approach them about their exploiting.
"...I grab my wiener and charge!" - ironzerg79
You can easily get full epic artifact/artifact equipment & rank 7 - 8 enchants just by playing the game.
In mod 5 and prior, you had to spend lots of time farming foundries. Now you have to run in circles in IWD for hours upon hours.
Honestly, I don't think hardly anyone in game has full rank 12s without putting in some serious money or if they still had hundreds of millions of AD saved from earlier mod CN farms, or from prior exploits....that being said it is possible if someone is willing to commit hundreds of hours to just farming. There is definitely money to be made on the AH, but I find it hard to believe anyone could get the hundreds of millions of AD it would take to get full upgrades.